With the improvement of living standards and the change of diet structure of human being, the incidence of gout increases year by year, and the social concern thereon significantly increases. In recent years, the incidence of gout has shown a gradual increasing trend in both of the developed and developing countries, and the prevalence rate even reaches 20% in seriously affected areas. Drugs for the treatment of gout generally have serious discomfort and side effects. Therefore, in 2009, some experts on endocrine, metabolism, heart and cerebral vessels as well as scholars on nephropathy reached a consensus that conditioning by health care food would be a relatively reasonable method. Currently, the industry of healthy food all over the world enters a rapidly expanding period. In the recent two decades, due to the irrational diet structure, the sub-healthy population in our country expands, which also leads to the steadily rising trend of the medical expenses in our country in recent years.
Xanthine oxidase is a key enzyme involved in the development and progression of gout, and is also an important target for developing antigout drugs. Studies have shown that the inhibition of xanthine oxidase can effectively reduce the plasma uric acid level and thus can be used in the prevention and treatment of gout and hyperuricemia. Peptide is a functional fragment derived from a protein molecule, and its efficacy in assisting the treatment of gout have been occasionally reported in recent years, e.g., collagen and enzymatic hydrolysate thereof have significant efficacy on controlling uric acid (WO2008066070-A1, JP2008547008-X). Theoretically, bioactive peptides potentially have an important mechanism of action for improving hyperuricemia: regulating the key enzyme system for purine metabolism. The regulating effect of bioactive peptides on purine metabolism enzymes can be realized by the following routes: active peptides of protein are capable of chelating metal ions, while metal ions are activators for the catalytic activity of the key enzymes for purine metabolism, and thus chelation of related metal ions by peptides can inhibit activities of certain purine metabolism enzymes and reduce the generation of uric acid.
Currently commercially available uric acid-lowering food and health care products are mostly plant extracts, and the uric acid-lowering ingredients are indefinite and the uric acid-lowering efficacies are not significant.